Liberal Daily Beast writer Michael Tomaksy has already labeled this year's Republican National Convention as "reprehensible." In his insufferable knowingness, Tomasky claimed that the next few days will be a "toxic waste dump of hate and lies and race-baiting." In other words, it will be the most racist gathering of party delegates in the history of the republic. Why? Because The New York Times said so, of course:
Tom Edsall said it without quite saying it this morning in the Times, that this Romney-Ryan campaign is becoming among the most racist we've ever seen. The two key lies so far are totally about race--that Obama is soft on welfare recipients, and that he's "robbing" $716 billion from Medicare (77 percent of recipients are white) to "pay for Obamacare" (that is, to extend health care to black and brown people who don't deserve it, havent earned it, etc.).
Hyperbole aside, what racism is the left railing about? Why of course it's the "dog whistles" that are inaudible to everyone but the dog-eared liberal media. It's the phantom–the invisible being that torments the political left and they see it everywhere! .
Tomaksy went on about how Democrats aren't blameless in this fight and faults them with failing to highlight responsibility in their crusade to expand the progressive state. However, he blamed Republicans for failing to have an "honest" disposition. A disposition that he says could be a legitimate counter-balance in our political discourse, but the problem is that it's grounded in conservative principles. Of course, liberals would love to have a 'conservatism' that is molded in their image and easily defeated by the liberal alternative.
Lastly, Tomasky insisted Democratic positions on the issues "are more popular." For example,
Republicans...have wanted to destroy Social Security since 1935 and Medicare since 1965. But the programs are popular, so they can't say that. Most government programs are in fact fairly popular, so the party that supports those programs just has to say "we support those programs," while the party that's against them has to lie. We're going to be hearing a lot of those lies this week, and a lot of quasi-racist dog-whistling about how Obama doesn't feel the same way about America as "we" do. So no--still not sure what I should find non-loathsome about that.
Of course, the Republican plan is to preserve via reform those very programs, which are doomed to insolvency without fundamental change to the current system. Rather than pick a fight over how best to reform those programs and offer a liberal plan as a counter, Tomasky is content to argue, without evidence, that GOP reform plans are simply an excuse to destroy the popular entitlement programs.
